5 comments about A Life on the Edge: Memoirs of Everest and Beyond.

1. We usually cautiously enter a memoir/autobiography work such as this. However, we were pleasantly surprised to find a decent writing style, excitingly detailed stories, and a sharing of intimate knowledge.
   
   The many epics in Jim Whittaker's life were outlined with sufficient detail to describe the epic, but not so much that it forced us to skip the remainder. I suspect that few secrets were not revealed about the Whittaker family.
   
   There were numerous color and black and white photos in the hardcover edition to help support the memoir, with a focus on the epic adventures and less on early family life.
   
   We give this work a rare five stars.



2. Jim Whittaker began his life with only one real difference from most of us and that is that he had an identical twin. However from almost the day of his birth onward, his life accelerated beyond what is normal for most of us.
   Mr. Whittaker enjoyed some luck in his life, particularly his ability to meet and mingle with some very powerful, influential and skilled individuals. He also enjoyed the benefit of his own hard work - from his days at REI to his climb on Everest and his efforts to put Americans on top of K2. He also had his share of bad luck, a divorce and a bankruptcy. This makes this story so much more entertaining because it is real, it is personal, it is something that could have happened to almost anyone with the drive and love of the mountains that Mr. Whittaker possessed.
   The accounts of his alpine adventures, whether on Mt. Rainier or Mt. Everest or K2, are gripping, well written and harsh reminders of why mountaineering is not a sport for the faint of heart. Jim lost many of his close friends through out his life and the mountains claimed many of them. Despite any set back however, he pushed onward. This drive doesn't appear to be the result of a lust for glory or wealth but simply an extension of the man himself. In my opinion, his greatest successes are not the mountains he climbed but the peace and love of nature, family, and the mountains that he has helped others find.
   This book is well written and easy to read and the pictures included are breathtaking (I wish there were more!). Reading this text will almost assuredly add a name to your list of personal heroes.



3. One of the truly great climbing books! The work describes this American Hero's life philosophy of learning and truly living. It describes how to take on an acceptable amount of risk and gain from the experience. I found valuable Jim's philosophy (who I met and idolized as a kid) translated into a world well beyond the mountain - into his political friendship with the Kennedy's, his professional life at REI and Magellan GPS; as well as his efforts to foster nothing short of world peace. I kept finding myself wondering if there was anything Jim had not taken on!

   The writing is considerably less melodramatic than a great number of climbing/travel logs, which is refreshing. Straightforward and clear, even when discussing the inevitable loss of life involved in mountaineering.

   A memorable quote follows: "It's about making the most of every moment, about stretching your own boundaries, about being willing to learn constantly, and putting your self in situations where learning is possible - sometimes even critical to your survival. Being out on the edge, with every-thing at risk, is where you learn-and grow-the most.




4. An incredible book. Not because of his achievments (which are very impressive), but because he shares his wisdom regarding life. This comes from a man who's seen it all, and has seen life's ups and downs. Highly recommended.



5. I'm a 20 year old guy about to graduate from college, and have thus been thinking a lot about the future and how I want to live my life.. I just finished reading the book and wrote in my journal about it, which will sum up how I feel about it pretty well:

   Wow... I just finished reading a really good book, a book that has brought together and solidified a lot of the things I've been thinking about the past few weeks. The name of the book was "Life on the Edge" by Jim Whittaker, the first american to reach the summit of Everest. When Chris and I went to the bookstore for our weekly visit, I was looking for an true-life adventure book, but I also wanted something that had a sense of "living" to it as well. I read "Into Thin Air" and it was like a drama novel, seeming almost like fiction. "Life on the Edge" hits much closer to home, describing the realities of a life well lived.

2 comments about Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition (Penguin Classics).

1. I didn't know anything about this real story until I watched BBC Conquistadors. When I learned about Cabeza de Vaca, I was eager to read the account of his years lost, wandering in the south part of North America for 9 long years until he found some "Christians" in the northwest part of Mexico. Although the book is short and simple, the information provided is invaluable, especially with the descriptions of the Indians in this region, its customs and way of living.
   One thing that called my attention was all the hardships he had to endure during his long journey, going naked and feeding mostly of fruits and roots, proving in this case that he was a survivor by nature since others were not that lucky in the same precarious environment. And yes, what a strange name.



2. I was intrigued by this strange chronicle when i lifted it from the dusty shelf of my local bookstore. I had never heard of it and I was surprised that such a thing even existed. A first-hand account of a 16th century conquistador expedition to the new lands of the Americas no less!

   The book is short enough to hold the attention and the fact that it is a true tale holds the attention through periods of drab text and detailed descriptions of the lay of the land. In fact, two distinct points capture the attention, firstly the matter-of-fact way in which cabeza de vaca views the monstrosities he is faced with, from shipwreck to torture and hunger. Secondly, the altogether human way in which the natives are protrayed; they are not seen as unthinking savages but as children, scared and uncertain, that need to be cared for. This is certainly not the tale of a gross escapade to conquer primitive peoples, rather it is an 'expedition' in every respect and it is fascinating as a result.

   At times it is a chore to plough through, but i believe the overall and lasting impression that the book leaves is a sufficient reward for the time spent on it.

   And, hang on a minute, doesn't the name of the author mean 'head of the cow'? How strange....

2 comments about Sir Edmund Hillary: An Extraordinary Life.

1. Sir Edmund Hillary, the great mountaineer from New Zealand and Sherpa colleague Tenzing Norgay, battled their way across the slanting snowfields and violent winds, up rocky cliffs and around the icy cornices to the 29,002-foot summit of Mt. Everest. Indeed, a New Zealand beekeeper was one of the first two men ever to stand on top of the world. Hillary was to be even more deeply respected in his lifetime because of the way he used his fame. His strength was not merely physical. It was spiritual, too, which gave him the higher purpose of devoting his later energies to the welfare of the Sherpas - buildings, schools and clinics, bridges, airfields and monastery reconstructions that were sponsored by his Himalayan Trust. During his next 55 years, he was to become one of the most honored men on earth. The most unpretentious and unpompous of mountaineers, He was the opposite of that contemporary mediocrity, the Celebrity, and a genuinely heroic non-celeb. In 2008, He died at the age of 88.
   
   Edmund Hillary went to Nepal to climb Mount Everest. He left behind schools, hospitals and health clinics. Today, more often than not climbers arrive with helicopters and TV cameras and in their wake leave a mountain littered with trash and corpses. Hillary was a humble and selfless, insisting that he and Sherpa colleague conquered the mountain as one, refusing the distinction of being the first. Climbers today pound their chests and stuff their bottomless egos with self-aggrandizement. With Sir Edmund Hillary's passing, much of the mountaineering world's remaining grace, humility and reverence have vanished.
   
   - Brian D'Ambrosio



2. Sir Edmund Hillary was an extraordinary man, who grew up in the most humble surroundings and driven, ultimately by his lifelong sense of being inadequate: of not measuring up. He suffered this at the hands of a cold father, and at a prestigious school that offered discouragement to young Edmund - labelling him as as an awkward misfit.
   
   Solitary by nature, he found in New Zealand a love for the outdoors and a passion for the mountains. Of course by 1953 his fitness, and drive, took him to the top of Mt Everest, alongside Tenzing Norgay, and for the next 55 years Hillary lived in the shadow of that mountain.
   
   By his choice he spent most of these incredible years giving himself to the people of Nepal - helping build schools, hospitals and airstrips not only through fund raising, but through hard physical work. In a sense he found a place where he really belonged and where he was loved.
   
   Ed Hillary's own books suffer somewhat because his story has been too often repeated. How many times has he been asked to describe the feat of scaling Everest? Over the years the story has been worn through familiarity and its power eroded - and his own writing has shown not only this natural erosion, but has also revealed his own taciturn unwillingness to discuss himself in depth.
   
   In this volume however, Johnston performs a wonderful job in capturing the heart of the man, and the glory of his personal journey. His commitment to the people of Nepal is an inspiration that has helped fire many others including fellow mountaieer Greg Mortenson Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time.
   
   Many of our world heroes, I'm thinking of Gagarin, or of Neil Armstrong, largely withdrew from public life. Hillary, perhaps because of his personal self-doubt kept trying to conquer his own sense of inadequacy, and as a result became an accessible soul who will continue to inspire.
   
   This book is, in my view, the best of the Hillary books available.

2 comments about The Mothman's Photographer II: Meetings With Remarkable Witnesses Touched by Paranormal Phenomena, UFOs, and the Prophecies of West Virginia's Infamous Mothman.

1. Last night, I finished reading Andy Colvin's book, The Mothman's Photographer II. This is one of those books that is essential reading for those of you fascinated with Mothman.
   
   Somewhat appropriately, and like the Mothman mystery itself, the book is full of all sorts of twists and turns, dark and disturbing scenarios, contains as many questions as it does answers, and definitely defies convention.
   
   The book basically tells the very personal story of Colvin's interest in, and obsession with, the Mothman; something that began in his childhood in the sixties when he and his friends constructed a "shrine" to the Mothman - and after which strange and bizarre things began happening to Colvin, to his family, and to those around him.
   
   In many ways, Colvin's book is more mind-bending than John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies. But this is a good thing: rather than simply go over old ground, and recount the original story, Colvin describes for us how the Mothman personally affected, manipulated, and possibly guided, his own life experiences, right through to the present day.
   
   And it's written in an appropriately unconventional style too: via interviews, transcripts, personal comments and thoughts, and more.
   
   For those who view Mothman as purely a crypto-zoological puzzle, you'll find yourselves at odds with Colvin, who places the creature in a very different category.
   
   Essentially, Colvin views the Mothman as being akin to the Garuda - the majestic bird-like entity of Buddhist and Hindu mythology. Colvin's view is that the presence of the Mothman at the Point Pleasant, West Virginia bridge-collapse of 1967 (as described in Keel's book) was not in any way sinister.
   
   Rather, Colvin sees the Mothman/Garuda as being basically a benign entity, and one that surfaces from its strange realm of existence at times of peril and strife, and when things are distinctly ill with the world. Part-helper, part-guide, it's inextricably linked with us - but generally for the better, Colvin believes.
   
   But it's also a creature whose presence should not be taken lightly - nor should the fact that the creature's presence at Point Pleasant may have been tied in with a whole host of other activity, including classified government projects in the fields of mind-manipulations and psychotronics, synchronicities, the Men in Black, dark and tragic prophecies, the world of big-business, the military-industrial complex, and much more.
   
   The Mothman's Photographer II is a fantastically strange trip into a world without rules, where just about anything goes, and where convention is thrown out of the window. But it works - and it works very well.
   
   If you read the book, you are likely going to come away with a new view (or, at the very least, a modified view) of Mothman, thanks to a man who had the vision and guts to follow his instinct and present his data, ideas, theories and thoughts to those willing to listen.
   
   And, given the fact that it seems the nature of Colvin's life was almost pre-destined from the day he first immersed himself in the world of the Mothman, perhaps he was meant to write the book. And perhaps we're all meant to read it. If so, Colvin has done us a great service in providing a book that is unique, unusual, riveting reading, and beyond thought-provoking.
   
   Read and prepare to have your mind blown, bent, reorganized and, if you get the message, elevated, too.



2. Andrew Colvin has put together an amazing, detailed, and compendious book on sightings of the Mothman, or Garuda, whose visage Colvin has apparently captured on film--but which also touches on the Rockefellers, the Manson Family, The Philadelphia Experiment, Union Carbide, and strange 1967 premonitions of the destruction of the World Trade Center.
   
   With transcripts of his interviews by the excellent Keith Hansen ("Vyzygoth") framing the work, Colvin weaves a fascinating tapestry of synchronicity, anomaly, and unexplained occurrence. There are transcripts also of talks by Grey Barker and John Keel, and of Colvin's own television program, The Mothman's Photograper, with annotations and asides by Colvin throughout. There is much, much more, though.
   
   The Garuda has been legendary throughout human history as a harbinger and a protector--an inspirer of prophetic visions. That this legend would manifest itself to Americans in the 21st century is, in Colvin's view, some cause for alarm--and comfort. Alarm, because its appearance usually foretokens disaster; comfort, because those visited are forewarned and forearmed. Colvin's friends and family in and around Mound, West Virginia speak eloquently of their visitations.
   
   My recommendation is that you unplug the phone, toss aside the iPod, shoot the television and spend a weekend delving into this most fascinating book.

No comments about The Seven Lives of Colonel Patterson: How an Irish Lion Hunter Led the Jewish Legion to Victory (Military).

1 comments about Ely Echoes: The Portages Grow Longer (Minnesota).

1. Great book for someone who visits this area. Gives us outsiders a peek into what life was like for the "pioneers" of canoe country.

5 comments about Weird and Tragic Shores: The Story of Charles Francis Hall, Explorer (Modern Library Exploration).

1. Charles Hall is the most extravagant figure in arctic exploration. His life is a poem. His biography is excellent. But, I have read a lot about arctic and antarctic exploration. Several books thrilled me. Not this one. It is OK but there are better ones.
   No 1. The Arctic Grail by Berton
   No 2. Endurance by Lansing
   No 3. Last Place on Earth by Huntford



2. What causes a merely modestly successful, married middle class businessman during the American civil war era to suddenly decide to head up an artic rescue mission (and then return yet again for another try). And then later still, successfully campaign to be chosen by Congress to lead the then most ambitious ever official U.S. expedition to the North Pole itself? His character.

   Hall took his Christianity very seriously. All of the crew of Franklin's famous expedition of a decade past were lost and Hall decided to dedicate himself to help, even though his limited means meant that he must hitchhike a ride out on a whaling ship, then set himself ashore alone, and live cheaply on the polar wasteland among the Eskimos from whom he meant to learn Franklin's fate.

   Indeed Hall, way way out there in icy nowhere land, after learning the Intuit language, did find out valuable clues from conversations from native elders while spending a few winters sharing this people's dangerous way of life, their igloos, their hunger in bad times, and their raw meat diet in better times.

   Because he kept a daily diary we get whole amazing story.

   Hall managed to learn enough of the truth to allow him to lead a dangerous trek for to collect valuable Franklin expedition artifacts. Upon returning the second time to civilization, his book and lectures were enough for him to win commandership of an official American expedition to hopefully attain the Pole itself, President Grant in enthusiastic support!

   Farthest North? Well the tale of Hall's third trip is a very good one and a final mystery is produced for our consideration thanks to the author's own modern day travel up the High North where he takes samples whose later medical analysis yields astonishing results.




3. As a resident of Barrow, Alaska, the farthest north community in the United States, I share some of the goals and fascinations of Charles Hall, which come out in the book. "The Arctic will get into your blood Earl. You'll be back." That is what one Inupiat Eskimo leader told me back in 1969, during one of my first short visits to Barrow. And I did come back and have lived here full time since the mid 1980s. The Arctic, its extreme environment, and its Native people, can get in one's blood. I feel very fortunate to be able to live here.

   When I was in Cincinnati, I talked with a local librarian who said that Charles Hall used to camp outdoors in a local park in a tent in the dead of winter, just to toughen himself up for Arctic exploration.

   As noted in the book, Hall should also be remembered for working closely with the Native peoples of the Canadian Arctic, as he searched for traces of the Franklin expedition. Many other Arctic explorers had only fleeting contact with the local people, if that. And Hall had to hitch-hike on various ships during his early exploration. When he finally got a ship of his own, then he died under mysterious circumstances. That is tragic and a dreadful way to end one's lifetime dream.
   So read this book, and enjoy its excellent perspective on the Arctic and its people, and the dreams and determination of one man, who did all he could to learn more about our northern lands.




4. This true accounting about the obsession Charles Francis Hall, a somewhat obscure Cincinatti businessman, had for Arctic exploration and its ultimate personal tragedy is fascinating.

   The author Loomis trys to convey the environment of thought that created the appeal the Arctic had for Hall. The sentiment was much more pervasively Christian during the 1860-1870s when Hall made his 3 trips to the north and was able to get farther north than any Westerner had until then. In the Afterword, Loomis describes some of the appeal the vast, unexplored Artic must have had for Westerners. The Artic was both magnificent and terrifying, it was as Byron wrote "All that expands the spirit, yet appals." Loomis explains that the public had an asthetic of the sublime and this went a long way to explain to me the attraction Polar exploration must have had for Hall. But as a modern day mountaineer Fred Beckey said, "Man is not always a welcome visitor in a kingdom he cannot control."

   The American explorer Kane, who died at age 36 was so revered by the American public for his exploits, that when his body was brought to New Orleans and then went up the Mississippi to it's ultimate burial location, people lined the river the entire way to bid him farewell. This helps explain the regard the public had for explorers (especially the ones who wrote accessible books).

   Hall leads the first two expeditions in search of one of the overriding mysteries of the time, what happened to the members of the British expedition led by Sir John Franklin. The last and fatal voyage was in search of the North Pole. However, because of the funding by the US government of the expedition, the loss of Hall and loss of the ship itself, there was a US Naval inquiry. Because of the quasi-Naval nature of the expedition, there was insufficient discipline on the expedition and the loss of the leader under strange circumstances caused most discipline to evaporate thus dooming the expedition.

   Loomis undertook his own mini-expedition 97 years after Hall's death in 1871. He visited Hall's gravesite and performed an autopsy with very interesting results.

   The book is well written so that during the narrative when the details might seem tedious, they are not. Exhaustively researched and well presented with essential maps, photographs and a list of the crew on the last voyage.

   Read and enjoy.




5. Chauncey Loomis' Weird and Tragic Shores is indeed all that. It tells the story of businessman and amateur explorer Charles Francis Hall. He goes in search of traces (possibly survivors?) of Sir John Franklin's expedition. The third trip goes wrong and Charles Francis Hall dies and is buried in the North. This book is driven by the personality of Hall and it is quite the personality. He is obsessed, unlucky, amateurish at times, belligerent, and stubborn, but the best word that could be one used to describe him is one that is applied to the Arctic itself, weird. The author captures the personality vividly with contemporary accounts, particulary those of Hall himself. It is an interesting book of a footnote character in the great age of Arcitc exploration, and sometimes through these footnotes in history one can see the truth behind what drives the explorers in its rawest form. An entertaining addition to the annals of history of the North.

No comments about Snake Charmer: A Life and Death in Pursuit of Knowledge.

4 comments about Scott of the Antarctic: A Biography (Vintage).

1. David Crane shows how the death of the explorer Captain Scott galvanized the UK on the edge of World War I, but he qualifies British response to the tragedy by pointing up that, despite the weight of popular opinion, the pre-war Edwardian years were not exactly the Golden Age of empire the way they are nowadays painted. Crane's life of Scott is in every way a re-revisionist biography, kicking against what he feels has been the unfair denigration of Scott's life and deeds over the past thirty years.
   
   Sometimes this approach works, sometimes it doesn't. Through meticulous handling of evidence, he tells the story without a hint of strain, and yet sometimes whole paragraphs stop the action to argue that history has shafted Scott once again. A prototypical Englishman in the days when "God was an Englishman," Scott has suffered from unthinking backlhas, or so says Crane, and indeed he says it about four hundred times so that, frankly, I began to sympathize with Scott's attackers a bit, for no one's that perfect.
   
   Indeed Crane admits as much, citing his rivalry with Shackleton and then finally with Amundsen as proof, but in each case, the other man is deeply at fault and Scott was just trying to muddle through on Naval smarts and years of experience leading men. It was a time for heroics, and something in the air (together with a thriving media culture) made heroes out of the most unlikely souls. England expected every man to do his duty, and alas so did Norway and Amundsen came home with the gold, so to speak, whereas the Englishmen after the same glittering prize were all dead by the time Amundsen returned home. "The Englishmen, the goal accompished," bleated the press, "lay quiet in the snows. Through the months since . . . while wives and friends set forth for meetings and counted time, they lay oblivious. All was over for them long ago."
   
   Beyond the heroics of the era, Crane attributes the legend of Captain Scott to his indispitable skill as a prose writer. There is something macabre about the veneration given to his last journal, found by the relief party, but it's a bizarre twist totally understandable in the context, the words that live on after the hand that wrote them has grown cold and still. Without that last journal, its reinscription of subaltern heroics, its narrative of deprivation and memory and love, how else would Scott be remembered? In this regard Crane has an interesting passage about the way in which Westminster Abbey had its own little competition going on with St. Paul's Cathedral about which site had the most pomp and had the most heroes of empire commemmorated there.



2. The book is dreadful. It continually refers to other expeditions that the average reader will not know about. The writing is random and its impossible to follow the thread. There are also many deliberate and irrelevant literary references just inserted to be clever. A great subject that I w\as looking forward to, treated very badly by a pseudo intellectual. Try as I might I could not finish it.



3. I particularily like the subtitle to this book, 'a life of courage and tragedy.'
   
   Scott was undoubtedly courageous. He could not have been otherwise. On the other hand, his courage and drive to get to the South Pole was not exactly balanced by experience or perhaps by common sense. There's an old saying that if you wanted to get somewhere like the South Pole, Scott would have been a good leader to follow, but if you wanted to get back, then other expedition leaders like Shackleton would be your first choice. Shackleton's quotation: 'Better a live donkey than a dead lion.' Consistent with this, Scott got to the South Pole, Shackleton didn't. Scott didn't get back.
   
   In this book, the author is clearly a deep admirer of Scott. And indeed he did great things. Coming from a humble beginning he appeared driven to accomplish things, and he did. He was a complicated man, and Mr. Crane's access to the family papers and Scott's letters give a view that is perhaps more balanced than what we have seen before.
   
   If nothing else, Mr. Crane is an excellent writer and the story becomes one of those can't put down books.



4. The history of Arctic exploration is not a subject I've ever had a particular interest in. I picked this book up more or less by chance, was intrigued enough to buy it ... and haven't been able to put it down. The story itself is absolutely gripping from beginning to end, but it's the intelligence and skill of the writing that makes this such a memorable and remarkable book. Wonderful. Six stars.

2 comments about Hermann Buhl: Climbing Without Compromise.

1. Hermann Buhl: Climbing Without Compromise does a great job of engaging the reader on several levels. Firstly, the photos are absolutely stunning. I've seen books with only photos, not as good as those included here, that retail for more than this book. The second way this book engages readers is through the well-told story of one of the most interesting characters in mountaineering history. Finally, and perhaps best of all, by using extensive source material from Hermann Buhl directly, this book actually comes across as a personal introduction to the legend, Hermann Buhl, himself.



2. Hermann Buhl was one of the greatest mountain climbers of the last century and this book consists primarily of excerpts from his climbing diaries, starting from his earliest climbs as a teenager in the Dolomites, continuing through his major triumphs, including, of course, the conquest of Nanga Parbat that made him world famous, and ending with his ill-fated attempt on Chogolisa. There are also several biographical essays, including contributions by his daughter and a long-time climbing friend, and many of the diary excerpts are accompanied by further editorial details about the circumstances of the climbs. The ugly politics that were involved in the Nanga Parbat climb and their effect on Buhl are also discussed in the commentaries.

   Although it is not as detailed an account of Buhl's climbing life as "Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage", this newer book has several advantages over Buhl's autobiography. The perspectives offered by the third-party commentators are very useful. There is a full description of Buhl's final climbs and untimely death. "Climbing Without Compromise" is nicely illustrated with black-and-white and color photographs that make a great contribution (although the story would be easier to follow in places with the addition of some maps). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, one gets to read Buhl's story in his own words. According to the editors Messner and Höfler, Kurt Maix, the editor of "Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage", re-wrote considerable portions of Buhl's text using far more flowery and poetic language than Buhl himself would have chosen. In any event, the two books, while overlapping to a degree, do complement each other as well. (And where there is repetition, the English-language reader will benefit from having access to two translations.)